


Bounds of Honor and Love

by devilinthedetails



Category: Memory Sorrow and Thorn - Tad Williams
Genre: Confession, Duty, Father and Son, Gen, Honor, Lies, Love, Loyalty, Secrets, Truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-10 22:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17435012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Camaris tells Josua who his true father is.





	Bounds of Honor and Love

Bounds of Honor and Love

“Prester John was not your father.” Camaris spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the waves pounding against the ship and the singing of the Niskies warding off the kelpa once he was certain he and Josua were alone in the cabin. He was honor-bound to reveal to Josua at least that his claim to the throne was built on a false foundation because Camaris, far from being the loyal knight of the legends he had always despised for making inhuman, had betrayed the king and country he had sworn to serve. His vows of fealty had proven to be powerless compared to his burning desire for his best friend’s wife, Josua’s mother of blessed memory. “I am.” 

“Pardon?” Josua stared at Camaris as if he had begun blathering in a language long since lost to mankind. “I must have misheard you.” 

“Prester John was not your father,” repeated Camaris, stomach roiling in a way he wished he could blame on the tempestuous sea. From a distant childhood, he remembered a priest sermonizing about how Usires had calmed a stormy sea before the disbelieving eyes of his gawking followers. Numb from top to toe as if a bucket of frigid water had been dumped over him, Camaris prayed that Usires would look down upon him in favor, calming the storm churning in his stomach. This appeal appeared to go unanswered since as he continued he felt bile blaze up his throat. “I am. I swear it on my honor.”

It was only when he finished this ritual oath that it occurred to him that it was meaningless. He was a man with no honor. He had violated his queen’s body and his king’s trust. He had fathered an illegitimate child through the vile sin of adultery. He had risked the realm’s succession and security because he could not love his lady chastely as chivalry required. All of Osten Ard had once praised him as a perfect knight but a perfect knight would have defended his lady’s virtue, not stolen it. He was not the perfect knight of legend but an adulterer and a traitor who should have been executed for his crimes against the kingdom years ago if he had been courageous enough to confess them. 

Josua didn’t question his honor, however. Instead an oddly relieved expression fell across his features. “I haven’t been able to feel a brother’s love for Elias for many years, and I’ve long suspected that he hated me to my bones. It’s good to know that we aren’t bound by blood after all.” 

“You do understand the political implications of what I’m tell you?” Camaris had expected a hundred different reactions to his revelation but he hadn’t anticipated this one. Josua never failed to surprise him, but he supposed that all sons must be a mystery to their fathers. 

Josua’s face became grim as a grave as he answered, “You’re saying my claim to the throne is a lie.” 

“A necessary one.” Camaris felt as heavy-hearted as the moment he had learned that his beloved had died bearing his son, a boy he had believed that he would never be able to acknowledge, a child who was both his greatest shame and joy. “The people of Osten Ard need you to lead and save them. You can’t abandon them to Elias’s tyranny.” 

“I suppose I must obey you.” Josua’s mouth was blade-thin, and his wry words cut Camaris. “Usires demands that sons obey their fathers even if their fathers have been absent almost all their lives.” 

Josua, Camaris knew, had been raised by monks. He would have been made to memorize all the scriptures about a son’s duty to honor and obey his father. He just could never have imagined that the father he was being taught to honor and obey wasn’t Prester John. 

“I haven’t raised you. I can’t command your obedience.” Camaris gave a ragged sigh, feeling as if his battered body had aged a thousand years since this conversation started. “I can only guide you and hope you’ll consider the best interests of Osten Ard, but I understand if you doubt my honor and my advice.” 

“I can’t judge you too harshly.” Josua’s lips quirked. “I too fell in love with a woman forbidden to me, the wife of the man I believed to be my brother. We never acted on our love, but by all the Aedonite teachings I looked at her with lust in my eyes and committed adultery with her in my heart. I’m as guilty as you are for laying with my mother.” 

“Like father, like son.” Camaris didn’t know whether he felt more like laughing or crying when he recalled the classic Nabbani quip about bastards being born with hot blood and a propensity toward illicit attractions. “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying that I hoped for your sake you would inherit other traits from me.” 

“It’s hard to love in opposition to honor.” Josua’s mouth twitched again, and Camaris wondered which of them would be the first to crack—to shed a tear of sorrow at their shared grief and shame. 

“I can’t blame you if you hate me, son.” Camaris’s voice was hoarse, and he choked on the last word. 

“You’re my father.” Josua bridged the gap between them with a squeeze of Camaris’s wrist. “I could never hate you. I could only ever honor you as a son should.” 

Again Camaris could hear the echoes of a stern Aedonite education in Josua’s words. What he couldn’t hear was the sound of love coming from his son’s mouth, and he knew from painful experience when he had followed his heart rather than his knightly duty that the bounds of honor were weak compared to those of love. The bounds of honor would have to be enough to tie him and his son together, however. It was too late for a love unencumbered by secrets and lies to swell between them like surging sea waves.


End file.
